Box Office - 'Alien: Romulus' Nabs Okay $18M Friday as 'Coraline' Returns

Ryan Reynolds' 'Deadpool 3' and Blake Lively's 'It Ends with Us' are almost singlehandedly keeping this August well above even 2019-level grosses.

An $18 million opening day for Alien: Romulus (review) is pretty good, right? With solid reviews and a B+ CinemaScore, we’re probably looking at a $41 million Fri-Sun domestic debut for what is the ninth film (counting the Alien vs. Predator duo) in a 45-year franchise. In raw earnings, that’s the second-best start for an Alien flick behind the $50 million launch of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus in 2012.

That B+ CinemaScore grade is the best opening night polling result for the franchise since James Cameron’s Aliens scored an A back in 1986 (Alien 3 got a C, Alien: Resurrection got a B-, AvP got a B, Requim got a C, while both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant got a B). However, in terms of inflation-adjusted grosses, Alien: Romulus sold fewer tickets on Friday ($15.3 million in 2017 = $18.4 million adjusted) and will sell fewer tickets over the weekend ($36.2 million in 2017 = $43.4 million adjusted) than Alien: Covenant.

The $97 million flick (foolishly sold as a prequel to Alien instead of a sequel to Prometheus) earned $75 million domestically and $240 million global and was correctly treated as a box office underperformer in May of 2017. Playing the “adjusted for inflation” game for the franchise’s respective opening weekends, a $41 million Fri-Sun debut for Alien: Romulus would be near the bottom of the pack.

It would be behind Prometheus ($69 million adjusted), AvP ($66 million adjusted), Alien 3 ($60 million adjusted) and Alien: Covenant ($43 million adjusted). It would be above Alien: Resurrection ($39 million adjusted over a $61 million Wed-Sun Thanksgiving debut) and AvP: Requiem ($15 million adjusted amid a $41 million adjusted Tues-Sun Christmas launch) only because they opened over holiday frames while being above the first two installments ($14 million adjusted for Alien and $29 million adjusted for Aliens).

They legged out, eventually earning $186 million globally (counting reissues) and $183 million worldwide on budgets of $11 million and $17 million. However, maybe Aliens was a blockbuster specifically because it was — like Rambo: First Blood Part II, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Avatar: The Way of Water — just a terrific James Cameron-constructed sequel. Since then, it’s been chiefly box office bombs.

Save for Prometheus (which barely sold itself as an Alien film and grossed $400 million globally on a $130 million budget) and AvP (which earned a frontloaded $172 million worldwide on a $70 million budget before earning, I dunno, around $4 trillion on DVD, Blu-Ray and cable TV revenue) every post-Aliens flick was (reasonably or not) perceived as a box office disappointment.

I bring this up to offer more context to what should be seen as a “par for the course” opening for an Alien flick. If $36 million in 2017 was seen as a domestic whiff for Fox, then $41 million in 2024 shouldn’t automatically be seen as a franchise-reviving rebound for Disney. If Fede Álvarez’s sci-fi horror flick — which has better overall reviews than its post-Aliens predecessors — has better legs than its predecessors and pulls on par with Convenant’s global grosses (which would around triple its $80 million budget), that’s a win.

To my happy surprise, it’s heading toward an over/under $25 million weekend in China, which should help tilt the scales toward a $100 million global launch. From Free Guy to Avatar 2 to Deadpool 3 and now Alien 9, 20th Century Studios - but not Disney - has been doing pretty well in China over the last few years.

It would also be a reminder that these films need budgets that don’t require tentpole-sized earnings. The Predator earned $161 million in 2018, slightly more than Predators ($128 million in 2010) and AvP: Requiem ($129 million in 2007). However, it cost $88 million compared to those films’ $40 million budgets. But if Alien: Romulus is just as frontloaded as essentially every entry since the 1986 action classic, with China mostly skewing the curve alongside an otherwise business-as-usual run, well, new boss same as the old boss.